Alfredo Wiechers Pieretti was a Puerto Rican architect from Ponce, Puerto Rico. He was an expositor of the Neoclassicism and Art Nouveau architectural styles, doing most of his work in his hometown of Ponce. Today, Alfredo Wiechers' city residence, located in the Ponce Historic Zone and which he designed himself, is a museum, the Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña. After enriching his hometown city with some of the most architecturally exquisite buildings, he moved to Spain arguing political persecution by the authorities in the Island. Early years Alfredo Braulio Wiechers Pieretti was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, on 26 March 1881. He was the youngest of five children born to the German Georg Friederich Wiechers Kelm and Isabel Pieretti Marsaud, a Ponceña woman of Corsican ancestry. Alfredo's father was a businessman from Hamburg, Germany who settled in Ponce around 1860 and in 1865 he was named Prussia's consul for Ponce. He was re-appointed in 1872 and 1874, at a time when Ponce was the capital of the southern region of Puerto Rico (San Juan was the capital of the northern region). Training Upon the death of his father in Ponce, Wiechers Pieretti, still an adolescent, came to be under the guardianship of Juan Lacot, the husband of Rosa Wiechers Pieretti, Alfredo's oldest sister. A short while later they moved to Barcelona, and Alfredo started studies in Paris at the École Spéciale d'Architecture. In 1901, he was awarded a gold medal for outstanding achievement and excellence during his professional studies. He graduated in 1905 and worked at the office of Enric Sagnier, a famous Spanish architect, in Barcelona, Spain. He lived in Barcelona for six years while working at Enric's distinguished studio. In 1908 Wiechers Pieretti married Ponce-born Carmen Gilet in Barcelona, and in 1910 he returned to Puerto Rico, settling in Ponce. His residence Alfredo Wiechers returned to Ponce in 1910 and, within two years, he built what is known today as the Wiechers-Villaronga Residence. He built it as his own residence and studio. He later sold the pompous home to Mr. Gabriel Villaronga. In a short period of time, from 1911 to 1918, Wiechers was commissioned with various important buildings such as: the Logia Aurora, Club Deportivo de Damas, the Havana Theater, Banco of Ponce Building, and Santo Asilo de Damas Hospital among others, where he fully expressed the European Neo-Classical style which he had learned from Enric Sagnier.